The 6th Walking the Berkshires Family Archive Caption Contest featured this radiant bride flanked by two swankily dressed bridesmaids. The shoulder pads alone would do honor to any linebacker and with the rakish tilt to an almost masculine fedora, the effect is something like a zoot suit for WASPs.
There were several excellent captions in contention for this contest. My cousin Tigerhawk, who knows the principals, and the always witty Bill West delivered marvelous entries, but after a great deal of back and forth among the judges, one submission rose to the top. It gives me great pleasure to announce that the winner of the prestigious and highly coveted WTBFACC (6th edition) is none other than the Educational Tour Marm, who noted that the face makes the model with the following caption:
The Three Muses:
L. Very Amused, R. Slightly Amused, Center: Unamused
The alabaster bride is none other than my grandmother Athalia Ogden Barker in whose house by the sea I compose this post. On the left is her older sister Esther Ogden Henneman, from whom TH descends, and on the right is her eldest sister, Margaret "Margie" Ogden, Great Aunt to us all and the family genealogist who stewarded and expanded the archive that it is my pleasure to continue. My grandmother's wedding was in February, 1937, and the formal portraits taken of her on that day convey and expressionless solemnity totally our of character with her bright and impish spirit. It was, I think, a sense of decorum rather than disinclination to wed that caused her (or the photographer) to strive for statuesque. No such injunction applied to her sisters, who clearly felt the occasion warranted a bit more levity. This picture belonged to Margie and now hangs in the rogues gallery of ancestors in the hall at my house. Whether or not they represent "the height of fashion and the model of form", the picture cracks me up whenever I view it and now it has a caption worthy of the amusement it inspires.
Thank you for bestowing this honor on me!
To think that I shall always be part of a familial anecdote makes me so ferclempt!
Posted by: The Tour Marm | July 25, 2007 at 10:17 PM